Hello Blog World!!! I have not fallen off of the planet at all; I have just been strolling very close to the edge. Maybe you have noticed, and maybe you have not; I haven’t written a lick in weeks, and have commented very little. I have managed to keep up pretty well on my reading, which has been very gratifying.

I just wanted to kind of update my friends on things. It all started about 4 weeks ago, right after I finished a regular(long) work week. My boss, our manager, suddenly transferred to another office in the northern part of the state. Since I was his backup for days off and such, I was suddenly him by default. It is now 36 days later of straight working, and I am still….it. So for 36 days I have been running out of the house around 530 each morning and returning around 630ish.

During this time I was not only covering for his absence on an interim basis, but I was also in a rather intense competition to be permanently placed in the position. In defense of the company I work for, I have to say that we are almost completely non political in our advancement and promotion of folks; it’s ALL about the money. Meaning, the person who can prove the ability to generate the most profit for our company will always be rewarded. From the top down to the bottom, a rather large portion of any person’s income is based on performance incentives. There is a lot of money laying on the table, and everybody wants their share. And the pay for the folks up the food chain is driven by the performance of the guys at the bottom of the food chain, such as I have been for most of my time. The only time I advanced up the food chain was those days when my boss was not around.

Not only that, but our performance is measured in a far more real time basis than almost any workplace I know. Everybody evaluates performance metrics, and we do to. While many evaluate things like this perhaps by quarter or even by month, ours is literally evaluated and reacted to on a daily basis. What that means, is that the performance of the people in the field is literally evaluated, adjusted, and reacted to in terms of…minutes. It’s crazy, and it’s intense.

Basically we are a team of about 20 folks covering some where over 12,ooo square miles of Southern Arkansas. All team members are out there doing what they do, and they have to do it right. One really can’t directly manage that, yet one has to directly manage that. Bottom line is that promotions simply are not given away to reward faithful service. They have to be earned, and the prize is given to the person who can come out on top of the dog pile so to speak.

Anyway, that has driven my activities for these last 5 weeks. We had about 15 folks furiously and industriously striving to show the uppity ups just what we were made of. Folks, this is capitalism at it’s glorious best. Nothing produces results like the dollar bill for sure.

Through hard work, and God’s providence, I managed to be the last man standing after the free for all cleared, and now the mess belongs to me. Most importantly, I now have the authority to train somebody up and replace the role I filled for MY boss. So, perhaps there is light at the end of the tunnel soon.

So..I walk towards the light.